The Forgotten Village (1941) User Reviews

The Forgotten Village (1941) Is An Interesting Low Budget Movie Made With Amateur Actors

[DavidAllenUSA · 7/10 · 21 January 2011]

The Forgotten Village (1941) is an interesting experimental movie made inexpensively and using amateur actors in Mexico, narrated by Burgess Meredith and written by John Steinbeck.

The short movie is a portrait of a rural Mexican village which has public health problems in the form of local drinking water sources infected by pernicious parasitic microorganism germs. Children in the small village die, and the local "witchdoctor" Indian old lady who serves as the village "doctor" does not cure the sick and dying children with her folk remedies, which include wrapping the children's abdominal area in snake skins.

The only educated person in the village is a young male schoolteacher, and he proposes that the village request visitation and assistance by the Mexican federal government rural health service both to attend to the sick and dying children, and also to correct the infected water supply problem.

The old lady "witchdoctor" leads a revolt against the teacher's proposal, and when the government officials do visit the village in time to correct the problems the bad water has caused, the same old lady organizes the villagers in a boycott of the visiting health officials. Her influence is strong and seemingly absolute. Only one person, a teen aged boy named "Juan Diego," is influenced by the schoolteacher and moves to welcome the Mexico federal government public rural visiting health care workers, and cooperate with them.

The boy takes his sick young sister to the visiting government doctors, who treat her, and also move to correct the water infection problem without the permission of the local people.

Juan Diego is thrown out of his home by his angry father, who sides with the witchdoctor lady, and the schoolteacher arranges for the boy to go to a big city in Mexico and obtain advanced education in health care.

At the end of the movie, we see big city Mexico and young adult students in lab coats, looking into microscopes and watching medical operations, learning about scientific, modern health care they can take back to the rural villages many of them have come from.

The actors are all amateurs, but the camera and editor work in the movie is excellent, and so is the direction of the actors by the movie's director, Herbert Kline.

Burgess Meredith's excellent and understated narration is also very good.

The overall result is a very interesting and poignant movie about simple people in rural Mexico, and problems they face, including social problems which prevent their access to modern public health care services and medicine.

The small village shown in the movie had no electricity, motor cars, modern communications (telephones, etc.) and had only a one room school and a single educated young male schoolteacher. This man becomes the pivotal figure in the story, the man who saves the health of the people in his village, in spite of the fact they try to refuse the help he suggests, and do not appreciate or reward his efforts.

It's a very old story told many times over history. The Forgotten Village (1941) is an interesting re-telling of the story, worth seeing and thinking about.

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Written by Tex Allen, SAG Actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Com and choose "Tex Allen" "resume" for contact information, movie credits, and biographical information about Tex Allen.

Tex Allen has reviewed more than 40 movies posted on the website WWW.IMDb.Com (the world's largest movie information database, owned by Amazon.Com) as of January 2011.

These include: 1. Alfie (1966) 29 July 2009 2. Alien (1979) 24 July 2009 3. All the Loving Couples (1969) 17 January 2011 4. All the President's Men (1976) 16 November 2010 5. American Graffiti (1973) 22 November 2010 6. Animal House (1978) 16 August 2009 7. Bullitt (1968) 23 July 2009 8. Captain Kidd (1945) 28 July 2009 9. Child Bride (1938) 24 September 2009 10. Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) 22 September 2010 11. Destination Moon (1950) 17 January 2011 12. Detour (1945) 19 November 2010 13. Die Hard 2 (1990) 23 December 2010 14. The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) 19 November 2010 15. Jack and the Beanstalk (1952) 26 July 2009 16. King Solomon's Mines (1950) 1 December 2010 17. Knute Rockne All American (1940) 2 November 2010 18. Claire's Knee (1970) 15 August 2009 19. Melody Ranch (1940) 10 November 2010 20. Morning Glory (1933) 19 November 2010 21. Mush and Milk (1933) 17 January 2011 22. New Moon (1940) 3 November 2010 23. Pinocchio (1940) 6 November 2010 24. R2PC: Road to Park City (2000) 19 November 2010 25. Salt (2010) 24 August 2010 26. Sunset Blvd. (1950) 1 December 2010 27. The Great Dictator (1940) 1 November 2010 28. The King's Speech (2010) 19 January 2011 29. The Last Emperor (1987) 20 January 2011 30. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) 9 January 2011 31. The Man in the White Suit (1951) 5 August 2009 32. The Philadelphia Story (1940) 5 November 2010 33. The Social Network (2010) 19 January 2011 34. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 1 August 2009 35. The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) 14 August 2009 36. The Witchmaker (1969) 21 July 2009

Written by Tex Allen, Antioch College graduate (BA in Education), and also SAG-AFTRA movie actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more information about Tex Allen.

Tex Allen's email address is [e-mail].

See Tes Allen Movie Credits, Biography, and 2012 photos at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen. See other Tex Allen written movie reviews....almost 100 titles.... at: "http://imdb.com/user/ur15279309/comments" (paste this address into your URL Browser)

"The Forgotten Village" (1941) is Not to be Forgotten

[MEGraybill · 21 January 2011]

"The Forgotten Village" (1941) is timeless picture of a group of Mexican rural village dwellers, who star unpretentiously as victims of incompetent folk treatment, their own resistance to change, the town's infected well water, and individual stress from the untimely deaths of children in the village. It is presented with the dramatic literary poetry of John Steinbeck,("Of Mice and Men" and "Grapes of Wrath"), the author of the story and the screenplay, eloquently told by the calm narrative voice of Burgess Meredith.

It is not clear if the adults of the village are similarly afflicted by the well water. The issue of water, a world wide issue today, is the backdrop for the drama of the characters.

The cast of characters reveal specific roles: there is "bad" witch doctor herbalist who fails to cure by laying a snake skin on the belly of a sick little girl. The girl's brother, Juan Diego, is rejected from his family for taking his stricken sister to local government medical officials who apply a spoonful of liquid medicine and then inject her with a drug.

The movie indicates the promise of modern medicine, and the story by John Steinbeck focuses on the environmental contamination in well water (a reality in many third world countries nowadays as well), playing down the value of the medicine woman's powers of comfort and spiritual reassurance, consciousness, etc. Just as the pharmaceutical drugs are not named, there is no mention by Steinbeck of any herbal plants and spices- just scenes where they are administered by the old herbalist.

The message to the viewer is that the old ways did not always work, in the face of grinding poverty and a bad water supply. But the rebellion against the "new" medicine by the villagers may be in part due to an instinctive awareness that for billions of years, human beings have found healing in barks, spices, herbs and plants of many kinds. A synthetic approach to healing ends the movie where white-coat clad students lean over equipment in labs seeking the answers to illness. Prevention and the mind-body connection is left to the imagination in 1941.

The well-meaning teacher in the village acts as the quiet voice of reason in the movie, seeking to bring the usefulness of water treatment to the village, and to bring pharmaceutical medicines.

Burgess Meredith's narration appropriately disappears behind the images of real people attending to their sick children.

With side effects of modern medicines claiming lives of over 100,000 people per year according to records published in recent years, this film now sounds a clarion call for a new balance- prevention-oriented medicine, not drugs with bad side effects. (Prevention in the form of public health- the protection of public wells also is indicated to make the public environment safer, for example.) In this movie, the message is the old ways did not work. But, the message today- 70 years later- is when is it time to abandon the new (drugs with bad, often fatal side effects) and learn about and apply some of the ancient wisdom.

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Written by Mary Ellen Graybill, a widely published writer who is a Letters Member of Pen Women (Gunpowder Branch, Maryland). Publications include The Baltimore SUN (MD USA)

This movie review is posted on WWW.IMDb.Com (the world's largest movie information database, owned by Amazon.Com)

To date, these are the reviews available: 1. The Forgotten Village (1941) 2. The King's Speech (2010)

A full list of Mary Ellen Graybill's movie reviews on WWW.IMDb.com with links to full texts of reviews is accessible via:http://imdb.com/user/ur24328853/comments

Mary Ellen Graybill's email address is: [e-mail]

you could have one without the other

[karlericsson · 5/10 · 10 April 2010]

Other reviews written about this title, claim that this film shows how a village must choose between their old way of living and the modern way of living. I can see no proof for such a claim watching this film. Why should the village have to take the whole "package" of modern civilization and not just take the good parts and leave the garbage? Now, in reality in might well be that they are forced to take the garbage and never obtain the good parts, but unfortunately this is not the story that this film tells. If, for instance, there would suddenly appear a gold-find in the village, surely the whole village with its inhabitants would be wiped out buy modern business-men and their lackey-soldiers but that is not the story that this film tells. That's another story. A better story. I still give this film three stars for its militant voice-over that defies all direct sound. How much better are not films, that in no way try to be "realistic". Films are films and when they not try to be something else then they are at their best.